Environmental concerns and economics encourage the collection and reuse of many materials which once were thought to be of little or no value. In some industries a large volume of liquids or solvents are used for producing valuable products. These ho liquids and solvents often times become contaminated with fines or particulates which pose environmental hazards or which may have significant value if they could be recovered from the liquids in an economical manner. Recovery of fine or very fine particles having an average diameter of less than about 20 microns represents one such need. In some industries, production of a high solids filter cake containing valuable product is desirable. It is also desirable to recover such filter cake products without the use of filter aids which have to be removed from the filter cake product in a subsequent step. In other industries, the solids are collected and disposed of and a substantially solids free filtrate or permeate is collected and reused. Whether it is the liquid portion or the solid portion which is desired to be recovered, there continues to be a need for a means for recovering difficult to recover solids and for producing substantially solids free liquids from large volumes of liquid streams in a cost efficient manner.